How old are they? I know a seasonaire who had his Megarides fall apart after 1 season - but he was skiing them everyday. Garmont told him he wasn’t guaranteed for pro-use. I can understand Garmont’s point to some extent.

My Scarpa Spirit IIIs have started falling apart in the their third year. I’ve re-pop rivetted the clips but had trouble finding pop-rivets that were big enough.

They’re a year old but I’ve lost count of the number of days, maybe 100. I use them daily and I’ve wondered if I’m abusing a touring boot for a more all-mountain use. Stöckli just made a better repair to them and have ordered up a complete new set of bolts/hinges from Garmont for me. They weren’t too easy to ski below 2000m yesterday in the wet snow

I think Stöckli will charge for the work, I had a mail from the Garmont distributor in Switzerland telling me to send the boot to them but I’ll go with Stöckli. The boots came from them in the first place and it looks a quicker turnaround, the fix they just made should hold until they get the proper parts whereas if I send them to the distributor it could take too long.

Just had the same thing happen on a pair of year and a bit old adrenalines… Mid 4-day tour (thanks to the guardian at Fond D’Aussois for the running repairs!).
Local shop here bodged together a fat rivet for the hinge - seems to work OK but will prob try and get a proper ‘Garmont’ replacement.
Have to say the Adrenalines seem to be ageing quite quick…

Just had the same thing happen on a pair of year and a bit old adrenalines… Mid 4-day tour (thanks to the guardian at Fond D’Aussois for the running repairs!).
Local shop here bodged together a fat rivet for the hinge - seems to work OK but will prob try and get a proper ‘Garmont’ replacement.
Have to say the Adrenalines seem to be ageing quite quick…

interesting, when you’re walking/climbing/skinnng how do you have the top of the boot done up? on the garmont walkmode clips or the full buckle? power strap loose etc? I’ve been wondering if I had the top too tight and stressed that rivet a bit.

what’s odd for me is that I can say I have actually noticed a gradual loss of control into the left boot (that’s the broken one) over a few weeks, so much I’ve been tightening the micro-adjusters a bit on that foot.

That’s just what I wonder about, I do the same mostly and I wonder if it stresses that pivot too much by reducing the travel in top of the cuff. I’m fairly sure the stress that sheared the bolt was from bending the bolt when traversing and bending at that point to flatten the ski to the ground.

oh.. and I’ll add I’m using an 88mm ski as well, so I also wondered if that’s creating more of a lever onto the bolt. I know that’s a small ski for skiing the internet but for skiing mountains it’s fairly wide

I had exactly the same problem with pair of Garmont Endorphins, bought last year (Feb 2007) from Jules at Sanglard in Chamonix. The first one broke after about a month, the second one at the beginning of this season.
According to Jules, the problem is that the hinge is really just a large rivet, and the metal Garmont use is quite thin and soft, so after a while it starts to give and eventually breaks through fatigue, certainly exacerbated by the extra pressure of fat skis and/or aggressive skiing. There’s also a danger that it can wear the plastic surrounding the rivet, so a replacement will be lose too. The fix is to get someone to press the rivet regularly (every couple of months maybe?)) before it breaks, or replace it with a better one, but it’s easily forgotten about after a couple of months! Now if I could only stop the canting adjustment unwinding…

I had exactly the same problem with pair of Garmont Endorphins, bought last year (Feb 2007) from Jules at Sanglard in Chamonix. The first one broke after about a month, the second one at the beginning of this season.
According to Jules, the problem is that the hinge is really just a large rivet, and the metal Garmont use is quite thin and soft, so after a while it starts to give and eventually breaks through fatigue, certainly exacerbated by the extra pressure of fat skis and/or aggressive skiing. There’s also a danger that it can wear the plastic surrounding the rivet, so a replacement will be lose too. The fix is to get someone to press the rivet regularly (every couple of months maybe?)) before it breaks, or replace it with a better one, but it’s easily forgotten about after a couple of months! Now if I could only stop the canting adjustment unwinding…

two good points, I’d begun to think that additional torque was an issue with bigger skis. Odd you mention the canting, I only noticed that when the hinge broke, it’s a known problem apparently, the guy in the store checked it right away so he already knew.

Jules reckoned that you wouldn’t really notice the canting changing on a touring boot, as with a soft sole and (at least for me) Fritschis, it’s all a bit soft and squidgy anyway. Even top racers can’t feel the difference when it’s changed by one degree on their super stiff alpine boots. Just put a mark on the canting adjustment (blob of paint) so you know where it’s supposed to go back to if it does loosen off. And then do them up tight!

The thing I can’t work out is that I’d been noticing a loss of precision in that broken left boot for a week or two, I can’t work out if either it was an early warning or me actually notching the buckle up slightly increased the pressure and broke the hinge.

My real problem is that Garmont just fit me perfectly straight out the box so it’s the boot I want to be wearing.

I had exactly the same thing when the second hinge broke on my boot. I was on a ski test, testing piste and freeride skis. On the fourth day, I could tell something wasn’t right, I swapped skis between my feet thinking it was the skis, as I’d completely forgotten that the hinges could be a problem - the first one broke the season before. I did the boot up tighter trying to get the precision back. It was probably even more noticeable because I was using the alpine sole that the Endorphins come with rather than the touring sole, and alpine bindings, and found that a lot of the skis chattering as I couldn’t get the weight on the edge, and found my knee turning in as I tried to get the ski to work. This was only happening on one side. To some extent I assumed that this was due to the skis, as I was testing lots of different pairs, but I struggled with the same symptoms all day.

I only noticed the next morning when the whole cuff of the boot was hanging off! And only on reflection of the trouble I was having the day before, and what it was doing to my skiing, did I realise that it definitely broke the day before, but could have been loose for a couple of days. I guess the moral of the story is that though Garmont sell the Endorphin as a Alpine/Freeride/Touring crossover boot, it’s never going to be as solid as a proper alpine boot.

So if you were having trouble with yours over a period of time, it could be yours was already broken, or at least very much weakened, but you didn’t notice until the hinge actually fell out! I would guess doing the boot up tighter and tighter was a symptom, not the cause.

I have a pair of Endorphins as well actually, I’ll have to go and check them. They’ve less days and a lot less vertical on them than the megarides though, with some ski/binding shuffle I was going to use them more next season. If there’s a problem I may need to get a new plan.

Jules reckoned that you wouldn’t really notice the canting changing on a touring boot, as with a soft sole and (at least for me) Fritschis, it’s all a bit soft and squidgy anyway.

I wonder if that is the case for Dynafits as well? I wondered whether the canting was worthwhile on touring boots though as they are quite soft and there is a fair bit of play even with Dynafit bindings. I must admit I’ve never touched the canting on any ski boot I’ve owned. One thing I did find after three years on my Scarpa Spirits is that I had the forward lean set to minimum - I’d always had a feeling of being too upright in these boots, now I know why.

There is a definite case for making touring gear as simple and as field serviceable as possible.

There is a definite case for making touring gear as simple and as field serviceable as possible.

Definitely agree with that sentiment. Less to go wrong! I think the Endorphin is a great boot, but then I’m not particularly heavy (11 stone/72kg) and don’t ski too aggressively. And yet I managed to break them! But I’m prepared to put up with their foibles for the convenience of having one boot that does it all. If you’re aware of the weakness, you can prevent it from becoming a problem.